Mark's Stuff

Hi Everyone! Dad thinks that he’s the only who knows how to post on his blog. But I’ve been watching him and now its my turn! I’m almost five months old now, and growing big and strong. Well, maybe not so big. I’m only just reaching 4kg now. There’s still new borns that re bigger than me! At least I’ve now grown out of some of my 0000 size outfits!

I get a bit grumpy around dinner time. Mum & Dad always seem to want to eat just when I want a bit of attention. But then they bath me, which I really like. And I’ve been really good and letting mummy and daddy sleep all night until Sam & Connie wake me up in the morning. Just in time for breakfast. Which tastes the same as dinner. And morning tea. And lunch. And afternoon tea.

I like poking my tongue out.

Mum took me to the baby market on the weekend and she bought me a new chair. So now I can sit at the table and watch Mum & Dad eat. Its very interesting. One day maybe I can also eat just like them!

That’s all for now. I better go before Daddy catches me on his computer. I also uploaded some more photos of me!

True to form with my most recent car, a VZ Holden Adventra LX6, its taken only a matter of months before pulling apart the interior panels to add some more electronics.

This effort is nowhere near as obstrusive as the Jeep’s home grown touch screen PC/media player/GPS, and I’ve tried to keep a factory look and feel as much as possible.

The bits that I’ve added are:

• Nokia CK-7W bluetooth car kit
• GME Electrophone TX-3400 UHF Radio
• RFI AP-454 glass mount antenna
• UDC Holden iPod interface

I actually installed the bluetooth kit a few months ago. A pretty straight forward install. I just bought the factory button from a local Holden dealer and attached a new plug into the wiring loom that’s sitting under a panel at the passenger’s right leg.

The 2.5mm socket above the phone button is for the phone charger. Good for those long weekends away! Its a bit unfortunate that the phone is upside down, but I wasn’t bothered trying to find if they also make one the other way up.

Last week I received my iPod interface from Vlad (http://udc.aus.googlepages.com/holden) and took to the factory head unit with a screwdriver and soldering iron to add seamless iPod support.

The only thing I did differently to Vlad’s recommended install was the way I routed the cable. Instead of cutting the cable and running it through to the arm rest compartment, I removed the centre console, drilled a 13mm hole, and threaded the mini din plug that comes with the kit through to the back of the head unit.

The insert to the compartment has only got three sides, which you can sort of see in the picture, It also has a false bottom, so its easy to drill out a hole big enough for the mini din plug through the console base, and then just check out a 5mm hole for the wire in the bottom of the insert. The compartment insert is screwed in from the bottom though, so I had to remove the centre console to get to it.

My Nano fits perfectly, but I’m not sure if the bigger iPods will fit nicely here.

And a close-up:

Last but not least was the CB install. This one was a little fiddly because of the tight space I tried to fit it in. Ideally it would have gone into the compartment above where it is now, but the radio was about 10mm too wide. I was going to take a few more photos of the iPod cable run, but that would mean removing the CB to get the console back out.

The GME Tx-3400 is a remote-head radio, so the main part of the CB is tucked up underneath the glove compartment. That caused the sound to be a bit muffled, so I used the external speaker that came with the Nokia car kit (The car kit audio routes through the radio speakers) and mounted it just behind the centre console. Much better sound!

On the 13th of May 2009, Kirsty and I welcomed our daughter, Pia Grace, into this world. She was supposed to arrive mid-June, but was obviously in a bit of a hurry! She weighed in at a small 2.09kg, and will hopefully be able to come home with us in a few days time.

Kirsty and I have been spending a bit of time in the special care nursery at the hospital (Kirsty much more than me), and Pia is slowly building up the stamina to last a full feed before falling asleep!

Due to excessive badgering by friends and family alike, I’ve uploaded a few more pics in my new Family gallery.

Well I guess it should be fairly obvious.. you shouldn’t drive it upside down! We came across this unfortunate scene just outside The Rip at Port Phillip Heads en route to dive the Rotomahana. We’re unsure exactly how it happened, but suspect it was the driver trying to pull the anchor up while it was attached to the stern of the boat. Add to that an oversized 250HP outboard on the back, and the owner is lucky that the boat was eventually righted and towed to shore. We offered some assistance by way of a couple of divers suiting up and jumping in to try and free the anchor line, but eventually let the water police (nice jetskis, eh?) and port authorities take care of it, and we headed off to the Rotomahana.

The SS Rotomahana lies in about 40m of water, and although there is not much left of her, she still boasts two massive boilers which make for a cruisey little swim through, and there’s still quite a bit of the deck structure remaining, albeit rather broken up. And of course abundant fishlife. But at 40m, and Justin and I not diving with a deco mix, we had about 20 minutes bottom time, a 10 minute ascent to 6m, and a further half hour of thumb twiddling at the shot-line washing off deco obligations.

After the Rotomahana, next stop was a quick drop-off at Portsea for a fill, while Ocean Diver headed back to Sorrento to pick up some more passengers for Anchor Wall and he Arches. The wind and swell picked up a bit so after Anchor Wall we couldn’t head back outside the heads. The alternative was a rather slow scallop drift just off Rye. Having never had the urge to take a photo of a scallop before, I took this pic which shows quite nicely how this stingaree and scallop have buried themselves for camouflage from natural predators. Like divers.

And as usual, a few more pics in my Melbourne Diving gallery.

After much talk, and further proscratination disguised as “finalising the design”, I finally convinced myself to take a couple of weeks off work to build a deck out the back of our house.

Armed with a truckload of treated pine and merbau, a few hundred galvanised framing nails, a box of 2000 stainless steel screws, a power drill, two cordless drills, a circular saw, a jigsaw, a drop saw, two saw horses, framing gun, chalk line, laser level, sprit levels, line level, tape measure, two shovels, a pick, one hired post hole digger (broken), one hired post hole digger (working) and a 4m² skip, my dad I got to work.

Day One was marking out all 19 post holes, digging them cleaning them out and setting up string line stakes for when the posts got put in.

Day Two had us waiting around for the concrete to be delivered. It was scheduled for midday, and by 10:30 we had double checked as much as we could, so got to demolishing the front brick fence while we waited. The concrete turned up around 12:30, and we had 20 minutes to barrow almost one cubic metre from the truck around the back and fill up the holes. String lines went up, the posts stuck down into their holes, and we called it a day while waiting for the concrete to set.

Day Three was Framing Day. Five bearers, and eighteen joists later and we had a (pretty much) perfectly level footing to work with.

Day Four was a lazy start waiting for the merbau to arrive. It turned up just after lunch, and we only managed to lay 5 rows of decking before the umpire called stumps due to bad light.

Days Five to Eight had as doing the same over and over. Choose a “random” length of merbau so that the joins were well spaced out, bevel the end, find a suitable matching piece, bevel the end. Lay them down, measure against a chalk line, adjust spacing, drill and screw. Repeat for 63 rows of decking, to lay a total of 390 linear meters. With a rest day in between.

The last day of deck laying also included making a frame for the BBQ to sit on, and finishing up the base boards making up the edge of the deck. A plumber was enlisted to hook up the barbie to natural, then a couple of coats of Cabot’s Aquadeck for protection, a quick trip to Ray’s Outdoors for some furnishing, and we’re ready for entertaining!

The only outanding thing now is to find a suitable sink to install next to the BBQ. Hot and cold water and waste are ready to be hooked up, there’s nothing to hook them up to yet

Oh, and I suppose it would be nice to get some nice real grass out there instead of the rollout plastic stuff covering up the dirt at the moment!!